Is there anybody out there dumb enough to contact us?

-

One of the surest signs that "intelligent" life exists somewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.


Think about this! I've been a big fan of the SETI program for about 20 years. Watch the movie "Contact" if you don't recognize this acronym.

Ok, ok, I won't make you do that, but I urge you to watch it anyway; it's one of the best scientific characterizations of how me might make contact with little green, or red, or blue men... or women IMHO.

SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. I know, it sounds kind of like one of the 3 heavenly kingdoms contained in the dogma of the Mormon church, but it's not. This is serious research, not myth.


So, I was thinking today about all the evidence and reasoning I have digested for years via astronomers, astrophysicists, planetary scientists and the like (you know, like the late Carl Sagan) regarding the odds in favor of the premise that other intelligent life must exist somewhere out there.


Evidence like; there are billions of stars in each galaxy and billions of galaxies in the known universe, the recent discovery of planets around other stars, the chemical makeup of the universe, the mere number of possibilities out there.

But the distances in space between stars is humongously vast, it's even vaster from one galaxy to the next. I remember once reading in "Astronomy Magazine", an analogy that boggled my noodle about how enormous the universe is. I think it went something like this.


If you were to throw a man out there randomly somewhere in the universe one million times, he would only land once in a spot where he would see any light at all. Only once, in a million throws! That's a crap load of empty space between objects, but still a motherload of objects like suns and planets... just all incredibly spread out, making the universe a very big place. As Ellie and her dad both said in the movie, "if it is just us... seems like an awful waste of space".

And then I had an "ah ha" moment, an enlightenment, a revelation of enormous portent. I'm certain someone thought of this before me, but I was the first one I heard it from... know what I mean? The fact (I think it's a fact) that we have not yet been contacted by any intelligent life from outer space is the biggest case in favor of the existence of such intelligent life.


Well, at least it's a damn good argument for any highly advanced life form, as in "exponentially more advanced than us earthlings". It seems to me that the really smart fuckers out there must be smart enough to stay the hell away from this planet and it's maniacal human population. If I were them, I would be watching and waiting, watching and waiting.

Dreaming